Andrea Marcovicci: Searching for a 'Smile' in a difficult era

July 17, 2012|Howard Reich | Arts critic

These are tough times for cabaret in America.

Just this year, devotees have seen the closing of the historic Oak Room in the Algonquin Hotel, in New York; the death of Donald Smith, arguably the country's leading cabaret impresario; and, most recently, news that Feinstein's – singer Michael Feinstein's space at the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan – will shut down Dec. 31 (though Feinstein has said he plans to reopen elsewhere).

Add to this a struggling economy, a polarizing election battle and wars around the world, and a certain gloom sometimes seems to hang in the air.

Which is why Andrea Marcovicci, one of America's leading cabaret artists, decided to cut against the grain. She has built her new show, which opens Wednesday at Davenport's, and its forthcoming recording – both titled "Smile" – on the notion that listeners fervently need escape.

"I've noticed in the last two years, in my little world of entertainment, that my audiences seemed down," says Marcovicci, referring not to attendance but to emotional state.

"I just felt that people were very depressed, and they were hard to entertain. It was getting harder and harder to raise their spirits.

"They were being less and less tolerant of the sad songs in my shows."

So Marcovicci – a torch song specialist who remembers that when she started her career, in the 1970s, "we looked for songs to make people weep" – concluded that she needed to modulate her tone. Thus was born "Smile," which contains such nostalgic, mood-altering fare as "It's Only a Paper Moon," "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries," "Pick Yourself Up" and, of course, the famous title tune by Charlie Chaplin.

"Smile, though your heart is aching" begins John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons' lyric to Chaplin's "Smile," and that seems to be the advice that Marcovicci is starting to dispense in concert and on the recording, which will be released officially in September.

But in conceiving this work, Marcovicci wasn't trying to console only her large and loyal audience. She was attempting to heal herself, as well.

"This show is borne of the deepest sadnesses that I've had in quite a long time," says Marcovicci. "In a strange way, it was my response.

"I was knocked down into a – I don't want to overdramatize this, but, clearly, after 25 years of singing at the Oak Room, that was not a job, that was my home. … That's a life.

"Then I was set to start the first performances of 'Smile,' and Donald [Smith] died. … He died on a [Tuesday], and I sang on Thursday.

"The force of what we do as artists, the force of nature that it takes to be able to do these things is all poured into 'Smile.'"

An advance hearing of the recording underscores Marcovicci's point, for you can detect the pain underneath the high spirits. More than just a series of giddy ditties, "Smile" shows Marcovicci searching, hoping for a brighter day. Though her overdrawn vibrato on the recording can be distracting, once you put that aside there's no mistaking the depth of her interpretations of music not often taken quite so seriously.

"I think she was very devastated by the (closing of the) Oak Room, because she felt that it was a blow to cabaret," says Shelly Markham, Marcovicci's longtime accompanist and musical director.

"But I think the death of Donald [Smith] made her even more committed to preserving the art of cabaret."

She declines to grieve over its future, however, for she still believes it has one.

She dreams of doing a cabaret program on SiriusXM satellite radio; she holds out hope that the Alongquin's Oak Room might return to its music policy; and she takes heart that in the wake of its closing she was booked to play in October at Café Carlyle, where Bobby Short famously held forth in New York for years.

Regarding the art of cabaret, "I see great life in it," says Marcovicci, pointing to the emergence of a generation of young performers, such as Lauren Fox and Jennifer Sheehan.